The present invention is directed to a system to be used in conjunction with various on-line networks that are both now in existence and yet to be created in the future. The system will assemble and provide content and advertising information to the network so as to be preferably distributed to a targeted set of viewers.
It has been known in the prior art that targeted advertisements can be used in conjunction with a network for an interactive service as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,347,632 to Prodigy Services Company. However, this patent does not disclose how advertisement queues that are intelligently prioritized and interactively updated are built. Thus, although the patent discloses that on-line networks can be used to deliver targeted advertisements, it does not disclose the mechanism for building targeted queues accounting for the exposures of users to those ads, and the real-time management of priorities, frequencies, and types of content to be shown.
Other targeted advertising systems have been known such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,099,422. According to this system, a customized video cassette is prepared based on a persons"" demographic and zip code information. A relational operation program is used to cause certain items of information to be retrieved from a customized memory for determining which segments are to be used and in which order they are to be recorded onto the videocassette. Unlike the present invention, there is no disclosure of a complete targeting system for on-line media that is both interactive and intelligent.
The present invention is directed to a targeting system and method that is both interactive and intelligent. Accordingly, the system according to the present invention includes some or all of the following major components: a queue builder for generating priority queues, a computer mediated communications network for sending content data and subscriber data to the queue builder, an on-line queue manager for receiving the priority queues from the queue builder and for sending content segment play lists to the computer mediated communications network, and an exposure accounting module for receiving exposure data from the on-line queue manager and computing and outputting exposure billing data.
The exposure accounting module includes an exposure billing module, a contract maintenance module, and an exposure accounting storage. The exposure billing module receives data stored in the exposure storage of the on-line queue manager and data is transmitted from the exposure billing module and the contracts maintenance module to the targeting data storage of the queue builder.
Preferably, the system also includes an information warehouse manager coupled to the exposure accounting module and including an importer/translator, an information warehouse controller and an information warehouse storage. The importer/translator receives data from an advertiser customer database and a third party database.
The queue builder according to the present invention preferably includes a targeting data storage coupled to a queue generator for generating the priority queues according to predetermined rules and profile definitions contained in the targeting data storage. Also, the on-line queue manager includes a priority queue storage for receiving the priority queues output from the queue generator. The priority queue storage is connected to the computer mediated communications.
The computer mediated communications network preferably includes an on-line application server connected between a plurality of subscribers and the on-line queue manager.
An object of the present invention is to provide a system for providing advertising and content information in an intelligently prioritized manner to an interactive computer mediated communications network including a queue builder for gathering content and advertising information, combining the information gathered with predefined rules, and outputting prioritized queues resulting from the combination, and an on-line queue manager for receiving the prioritized queues and outputting play lists to the interactive network host server in real-time. The queue builder includes a targeting data storage coupled to a queue generator for generating the priority queues according to predetermined rules and profile definitions contained in the targeting data storage.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a system for providing targeted information to a user in an on-line computer mediated communication including a queue builder for combining a targeting data storage with a plurality of editors and outputting resulting data to a queue generator, and an on-line queue manager including a priority queue storage which receives data from the queue generator. The on-line queue manager also including a queue server coupled to the priority queue storage and connected to a server for an on-line information service via a request broker and a network interface.
The system according to the present invention also includes an exposure accounting module including an exposure billing module, a contract maintenance module, and an exposure accounting storage. The exposure billing module receives data stored in the exposure storage of the on-line queue manager. Preferably, data is transmitted from the exposure billing module and the contracts maintenance module to the targeting data storage of the queue builder.
These and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent in view of the following detailed description.